


An Unused Football Field Holds More Than Buried Treasure

by wyvernisgod



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Fluff, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:14:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4125184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyvernisgod/pseuds/wyvernisgod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan takes some time to reflect. At night. On the roof of the school.</p>
<p>Terezi joins him, and they talk about a certain girl who made them both very happy and sad at the same time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unused Football Field Holds More Than Buried Treasure

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a two hour challenge (for myself), and I think I did alright! The challenge was to write a fic that was at least 2000 words in two hours. So I picked homestuck, spun the wheel, and landed on Teridan. I hope you guys like it, and, as always, if you find something wrong, please, tell me!

Eridan was pretty sure that he wasn’t supposed to be here, but it was dark, and no one had called the cops yet, so really, what did it matter?

The summer breeze ruffled his hair and made his clothes wave like flags as he dangled his legs over the edge of the school roof. It was touched with cold as night set in, and the moon rose like a giant silver beacon in the sky. The warmth of the day was still set into the concrete roof, though, and it chased the chill away as well as any heater he could ask for.  
The football field this time of year (or any time of year, really) was unkempt, roughly hewn grass making deformed shadow creatures dance as the light faded. He couldn’t see them from here, but he knew that small purple flowers clustered together in places where the grass was thin, as well as puffy dandelions and a strange kind of orange bloom that he had no name for.  
When the weather was good, the students used to go out and pick them during lunch. Eridan never bothered, knowing that if they were taken from the field they would wilt and die within the hour, no matter the care that was bestowed upon them. They were weeds, but they were still fragile.

Inch by inch, the green mat of the field turned black and white with silver edges, and when Eridan looked at his legs he saw that they were the same way. It was late, now, and if he didn’t get back soon someone would find his bed empty and soon enough they would find him, and he already had two strikes against him. But the moon and the grass and the breeze were quiet, and it was warm, so he decided to stay a little longer. What harm could he do here, really?

Fef had left the day before, in the harsh sunlight that beat down on them like the wrath of god. He had watched her go from inside, watched her hug her friends and laugh and smile and, once, wiping away tears. She wasn’t the only one; at least ten other kids were leaving, a day early, for summer break. The parking lot was full of laughter and talk and sweaty bodies wishing each other good luck and happy days to happy nights and every other meaningless anecdote that people said to each other when they knew they would never see each other again.  
He had decided not to indulge in it. He had friends, but telling them goodbye would only remind everyone that he was staying behind. For the summer. Like he did every year. His father had decided that keeping him here for summer courses (what a fucking laugh—pottery and poetry and whatever he would decide to sign up for were just a reason to keep him away from home) would make sure that, whatever problems and slight indiscretions Eridan had on his record aside, a good college would look at him and see someone who they could put on their brochures and feel proud of.

At least, that was what he had said to Eridan the last time he had seen him (he didn’t even remember when that had been—a year? A year and a half? He only went home during Christmas when the school didn’t have enough students staying behind to take any of the extra classes). That had been the last time he had seen his brother, too. They had wished each other good luck, smiled, hugged, and parted ways. Eridan didn’t really even remember what Cronus looked like—all he saw when he thought of his brother was a lit cigarette, a lightning bolt shaped scar, and two red rimmed purple eyes that looked heavy with regret and exhaustion.

He had told Fef all of this, once. She had patted his back in soft, unspoken understanding, and then they had put their heads together and watched Harry Potter until they were too tired to stay awake. They had gone to the beach that day, had gotten one of the upperclassmen to let them tag along during a weekend, and she had smelled like the ocean and the sweet shampoo that she used. Eridan had fallen asleep with that smell in his nose, and sometimes he would catch it on the breeze, filling him with warmth and the thoughts of crashing waves and heavy sun and happiness. Then it would pass by him and he would be left clutching empty fistfuls of nothing to his chest like that could keep her there with him.

Sometimes he would stare at the ceiling and tell himself that his life was fine, he shouldn’t be this mopey and unhappy. And really, from an outside perspective, it was. He was smart, he made good grades, his family was rich, and he was guaranteed to get into a good college to pursue a business degree that would make him rich enough not to need the inheritance that his dad would leave him when he died.  
But the exhaustion that he always felt, the tears that always threatened to rise to the surface at any given moment, the way his hands shook when someone talked about his parents, the image of his brother’s tired eyes and Fef’s disappointed ones, those told a different story. He wasn’t unhappy, no. That was the wrong word.

He was miserable.

The grass pitched and rolled under the steady western wind. A bird’s song made its way to him—a wonderful tenor solo that went on for five minutes and then trailed off into silence. The moon was far overhead, at the top of the curve of the world, and six stars stood stubbornly still in the sky, following it in slow but definite patterns. Eridan had studied them last year, charted their movements across the blue velvet sky, and had felt the indescribable wonder that comes with realizing nothing is permanent, and that you are nothing but an ember feeding the fires of entropy as it burned the universe to the ground.  
He had aced the course, and it was one of the few that he would be willing to take again, just because.

From behind him came the sound of the rooftop door opening, and to him it was worse than the sound the gates of hell would make as they slammed shut behind him. But no teacher snapped at him, no guard grabbed his arm—instead, someone sat next to him, and the next thing he knew there was an elbow in his ribs and a voice like butter in his ear. “You’re Eridan, right? Couldn’t sleep either? Heh. Are you an insomniac, or do you pop pills?”  
Eridan jerked away, turning to face whoever had joined him, and found himself face to face with Terezi Pyrope, head of the Mock Trial Team and the voice of the school’s radio show. He knew her by face only, a full, grinning face with a well-groomed mop of curly red hair and blazing teal eyes that could see through any lie you put up to protect yourself. His father had the same eyes, but his were cold and practical while hers were full of determination and passion.  
  
Before he could stop himself, he snarled out, “Neither. I just couldn’t fuckin’ stand my roommates, so I came up here.” Her grin didn’t fade for a moment, and she tapped the walking stick she always carried against the edge of the roof in an incessant rhythm.

“Couldn’t stand them, huh? Maybe you should put in for a switch. They’d probably give it to you, now that it’s summer, and if they don’t, just ask to switch with someone.” He scowled at her, this girl who was ruining his peace, but she just stared right back at him, a lawyer’s stare that dared him to say something so that she could twist it against him.  
“Yeah, wwell, they fuckin’ hate me in the admin’s office, and I don’t think I’m buddy buddy enough wwith anya the pricks in this school to ask for a swwitch.”

She rolled her eyes at him, a loose shrug of her shoulders accompanying it in perfect harmony. “Some of them aren’t that bad. The administrators, I mean, not the students. Most of them are pretty shitty. Lucky me, I got the best roommate on campus—she set up my computer to get through the school’s firewalls, I don’t tell anyone about the bottle of Stoli’s under her bed, and we both like the same kind of music.”  
Eridan was surprised. He expected her to be a goody two shoes, insisting that hey, the kids here weren’t that bad! Some of them were really trying to make friends, and if you can’t see that, Mr. Always-Looking-Down-On-Everyone, well then, if you’re not part of the solution, right? Fef had been like that—but that was a road he didn’t want to go down, not here.  
He huffed out a breath, looking out onto the football field, and said, “She sounds pretty cool. Nothin’ like mine, he nevver bothered learnin’ my name. But he brings girls in sometimes, an’ he’ll try an’ rat me out for readin’ at night. Says the light bothers his eyes, the fucker.”

  
 Terezi laughed, a low rumbly sound that puts him slightly more at ease. They stared out at the grass for a few minutes until she said, mischievously, “You ever been on the field at night? I heard they buried treasure out there when the school was first built, and that’s why we never play on it, because the principal has the detention kids digging under it looking.”  
Eridan snorted, remembering hearing the story for the first time and, as a freshman, believing it. Principal Hussie did seem like the sort that would do something like that, and to a gullible and impressionable freshman, that was all he had needed to make the story the gospel truth. He shook his head. “No. I’vve nevver been on it, period.”

Terezi stood, twirling her walking stick, and waggled her eyebrows at him. “Do you want to? I have a key to the outside gate. Privilege of being a teacher’s pet.”

Eridan blinked up at her, and some part of his mind was telling him that he should just go back to bed, but really, why should he? Because it was the right thing to do? Who cared? He stood as well, nodding, and brushed his pants off. “Sure. Wwhy the hell not?”  
So they went, sneaking down the stairs to the ground floor, and the stale smell of recycled air and rubber filled his nose, inescapable as always. Terezi turned as they walked down the wide hallway, wrinkling her nose. “Ugh. You’d think with what they charge for kids to be here, they would invest in some air fresheners.”

Eridan, caught by surprise, responded without thinking. “There are a lot more problems wwith this school than bad smells evvery once in a wwhile.”  
He froze for a moment, afraid that she would ask what he meant, but she just nodded sagely. “Yeah, you’re right. You know what they should do, though, is put more money into the cafeteria. I bet that would eliminate half of the bad smells, at least. Like broccoli Tuesday, remember that?”

Remembering quite well the horrible smell of boiled vegetables and burned mashed potatoes, Eridan felt like gagging. “You don’t havve to remind me about the abrocolypse. It’s burned into my mind as it fuckin’ is.”  
Terezi snorted, and Eridan felt his face heat up as he realized what he said. “The abrocolypse? That is the worst pun I’ve heard in a really long time. You make that up?”

He looked away, muttering, “Heard it from a friend of mine. She wwas good with puns.”

They were at the outside doors, now, and Terezi pulled a small ring of keys from her pocket and fit one in the lock. Casually, while she was unlocking the door, she said, “That’s Feferi, right? Who you’re talking about? Didn’t you two go out, or was that whole drama made up to add some spice to the end of the year?”  
He stiffened. He had avoided all questions about it, choosing either not to respond or to snarl something offensive at the questioner, and so eventually people stopped asking him about it and drew their own conclusions. He said nothing, and when she opened the door at last, she murmured, without turning around, “Sorry for asking. I have a lawyer’s curiosity, runs in the family.”

They headed outside, easily unlocking the football field’s chain-link fence gate, and both of them headed straight for the fifty yard line. Eridan kept his distance from the girl, but they walked the same pace. She took long, purposeful strides, and he was just tall, and when they got to the middle of the field Terezi sat down with a sigh and gestured to the sky. “You take Astronomy yet? Pretty cool course, but they banned us from the roof because some kid threw his book off the side and it hit a teacher.”  
Eridan sat a few feet away from her, nodding. “Yeah, I took it last year. It wwas my favvorite course, actually.”

She nodded, eyes distant, and said, “I thought it was pretty cool too. I tried to convince Feferi to take it with me, but she thought it was a waste of time. She wanted to take poetry instead, and Marine Biology.”

Eridan stared at her, and she took her eyes off of the heavens long enough to stare back, and suddenly there was a tension in the air that he didn’t like at all. He was the first to speak. “You and Fef wwere friends?  I nevver heard her mention you.”  
She nodded, not taking her eyes off of him. “Yeah. I was… for a while, I had a crush on her, actually, but she never returned the feelings. I thought it was because she didn’t like girls, and then I thought it was because she was dating you, but now I guess I just have to accept that she just wasn’t interested.”

There was silence. The bird started singing again, and then Eridan decided to say something, because otherwise he would either go insane or have to leave. “You… you had a crush on Fef? Really?” Terezi raised an eyebrow at him. “What, does it surprise you that I’m not heterosexual?”

Eridan fumbled for words. “No, no, I just… I didn’t… I just thought…” He trailed off, feeling like he was digging himself deeper with every word, and she smiled at him, nodding. “You thought you were the only one to have a crush, huh? I’ve been there.”

He stared at this girl, this girl who had barged into his peace and quiet and dug into his personal life and had told him life-ending secrets so casually it was like she was discussing the weather (because as much as people would insist they weren’t homophobic, or biphobic, or whatever, there would always be those people who sprayed poison on things different than them), and had no idea what to say. So he just got angry, which had for years been a reliable fallback. “You don’t knoww the first fuckin’ thing about me, Terezi Pyrope. You don’t knoww shit about me an’ Fef, or wwhat wwe’vve been through, wwhat I’vve been through. You think you can just drop shit like this on me and expect me to spill all my fuckin’ problems out to you, is that it? Try and fix me like the psychiatrists and the doctors and my family that act like I’m fuckin’ six years old? Fuck you.”  
  
He stood, ready to get off the field and go to bed and stare at the wall in burning angry silence, but Terezi stood too, rolling her eyes at him like she hadn’t heard a word. “No, you dumbass, I’m telling you all this because, along with having a crush on Feferi, I have one on you too. I thought it would be nice to tell you somewhere where no one would giggle if I asked to talk to you alone. People at this school don’t need another reason to gossip.”  
It took Eridan a few seconds to process this sudden turn of events, and while he stared at her and she looked levelly back at him, it all struggled to fit together in his head. What finally came out of his mouth was, “You don’t evven knoww me. And I’m sure that wwhat you’vve heard from Fef and evveryone else hasn’t exactly put me in the best light. So if you’re lying, if this is some sick game, tell me right fuckin’ now.”  
She grinned brightly at him. “It’s not a joke. I don’t play those kinds of games. And I know a lot more about you than you think, Eridan Ampora. Not as much as I’d like to, but enough to know that you aren’t entirely a complete douche. Way deep down.”

The moon was bright and the air smelled like grass and humidity and he wasn’t sure at all how to handle this news. He had had crushes in his life, but they had been fleeting, and then he had met Fef and he had been lost. Six years of unrequited feelings, and now that he had finally confessed and she had told him flat out that no, she didn’t want to date him, he was emotionally exhausting and she didn’t think they should be friends anymore, he didn’t know what to do with himself.  
But he did like the way Terezi’s hair fell around her face, and the way her eyes stared at him with that unwavering intensity, and her voice that ran up and down the octaves like a finely tuned cello, and he thought to himself that if he was going to pick someone to attach himself to, she wasn’t the worst choice (and, in fact, she might be one of the best). So he nodded, and stepped forward, and then they were kissing, soft and slow, in the middle of the unused football field that may or may not have held buried treasure beneath it.

And when they separated, and she smiled up at him (a smile that was both soft and predatory, like he was a prize to be won), he found himself thinking that Terezi Pyrope was A) a scary girl with a presence like a hurricane and the banter to back it up, and B) a very, very good kisser.  

He just hoped she didn’t try and make him join Mock Trial Team, because he was pretty sure they weren’t allowed to curse.


End file.
